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The Tiny Kitchen

The other day I had a little Tiny House writer's block and I put the question out to my Facebook page. I wanted to know what you, my readers, wanted to hear about. I got a lot of great questions, some of which are pretty complex and may require some further research. But I thought I would talk about one question here today.

What is your kitchen like?

Everything that we use in our kitchen is portable or temporary. For example; we didn't build in a stove or oven unit. We use portable butane burners. We have two but unless we are making something that requires two burners, we typically only have one out on the counter at a time. We have the L shaped counter and cabinets beneath. Under the smaller cabinets we store all of our utensils. Under one half of the larger cabinet we store our food. The other half holds a cooler so we can keep some foods cool, but we rarely ever used it. The plates and glasses are stored on the shelves above the counter.

Also in our kitchen is the Berkey water filter. This is a gravity fed filtration system that we put our spring water into to make sure it is as clean as possible. We don't drink it, but we could. We use this primarily for washing dishes and ourselves.

Our pots and pans are stored under the sofa, but since the sofa is reaching distance from the kitchen it isn't a problem to have them there.

We have also built an outdoor kitchen where we cooked most of the summer. Outside we have a Camp Chef Camp Oven, which is a sweet propane oven. Anything you can cook in an conventional oven can be cooked in there. We would also take our butane burners out there to cook.

Most of our food came from the local farmer's market. We would buy fresh food weekly and eat it within the week so we rarely needed refrigeration. We do have a Stirling Engine Cooler which is hooked up under the house to our battery system. We turned it on when we needed it and used it primarily to chill our beer. Unfortunately, Coleman no longer makes these.

You'll be able to read a little more about our kitchen in my book, 120 Ideas for Tiny Living, which I expect to have out by the end of March.

If you have any more questions about the way we live in our tiny house, please feel free to ask.

Thanks for reading. That is a great question. We can - it is perfectly safe - but we have chosen not to at this time. Because all of our water is collected from a spring about 200 vertical feet down from our house site we have to carry it up to the tiny by hand. Water is pretty heavy. We have 6 4-gallon containers that we carry up and down the mountain when we need it.

The Berkey only holds about three gallons filtered water so we prefer using the spring water for washing only. At this time we buy gallons of drinking water from the store.

Once we complete our Rainwater Catchment project we will likely begin drinking our water from the Berkey because the water will be more easily accessible.

Dear Laura,Ah, that makes sense: of course you have to haul the water! Just to reiterate, I love your blog and your tiny house; it's full of ideas for me to stow away for my own someday. Also, I just discovered Piglet's blog and it is a-freakin-dorable!So thanks for everything!Best,Rita

I enjoyed the pictures but...hehe...my favorite part is the farmers market...I've met so many wonderful people at the Mars Hill one and some of them have even taken my spanish classes at Madison county's AB-Tech campus, lol.

Love, love, love the simplicity of this. No complicated water heaters, pressure systems, pvc pipes in the walls. If you leave the house in the winter you have no fear of frozen pipes and flooding. I would say brilliant but its more like spectacular.

Do you use the camp chef oven indoors, or only outside? One of these, placed on your butane stove would probably bake anything you needed too indoors, if you feel the camp chef is unsafe.

My caboose build will become my full time home for myself and 2 small dogs. I chose to make a galley kitchen on both sidewalls over the wheelwells of my 8x20 RV frame. This centers the weight of a RV 3 burner stove with oven a mini freezer and a mini fridge. These appliances are 12 inches above the floor making the counter a bit high. The 12 x 12 "Toe kick" will house the battery pack and charger controler for the solar aray. I placed 6 feet of vanity cabinets over the left wheel well by cutting out the rear section of the cabinets. By overbuilding the wheel well It created a heavy duty rear shelf for the cast iron pots and pans. Here is a link that should get you a few pictures.

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This article originally appeared in the January issue of Tiny House Magazine. Check out details to read this and other amazing contributions when they're published each month.

Our tiny house journey has been a roller coaster, and
we wouldn’t want it any other way. We began our process in 2007 when we bought land in
Western North Carolina. We broke ground for our foundation in 2009. We spent
the next 3 years building the tiny house with our own four hands on weekends
and vacations. And it was 2012 that we moved in. I’ve not kept any of our decisions secret and after
living in the tiny house for a year, we bought a bungalow in the city that we
fixed up. But people always want to know the whys behind our various
adventures. So, without further ado, here are the 10 reasons we built and lived
in the tiny house, and the 10 reasons we moved out. Adventure.
It all comes down to this. My partner and I are not people who can sit still.
When we decided to move from the state where we grew up…

This article originally appeared in the April 2019 edition of Tiny House Magazine. You can subscribe and read the most recent May issue today.

This summer, after years
of treating our tiny house as a quick weekend getaway, we are moving back in
full time. This is the first time we will live in the tiny house for longer
than a couple of nights since 2013. We are excited about our new adventure as
Matt begins a summer law job in Asheville between his first and second year of
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than seven years that didn’t get a fresh coat of paint or some other makeover. Now,
our tiny house could feel as new and exciting as our current adventure. Over the week of Spring
Break in March, we traveled up to Asheville to paint the inside walls of the
tiny house. We were inspired by several tiny house friends who also used paint
to give their tinies a clean, new look.